People in various situations could benefit substantially from having a simple, convenient, inexpensive, collapsible and easily-transported device that can help transport an injured person, or drag a heavy load.
As one class of circumstances, people such as soldiers, rescue workers, and emergency medical technicians often need a lightweight transporting device that can be hand-carried over uneven terrain (such as through a forest or wetland, down an embankment, etc.), to locations where wheeled gurneys cannot reach, without the weight and cumbersome inconvenience of large and stiff “backboards” of the type carried by ambulances. As one example, soldiers on foot patrol in a hostile area cannot realistically carry or drag around a backboard, for evacuating someone who has been injured by a bomb or attack; similarly, if a rescue person or team must carry a backboard a mile or more into dense woods, to rescue an injured hunter, the weight and awkwardness of the backboard can lead to serious fatigue in the rescuer(s).
A different type of transport device is sold by a company called Skedco, Inc. (www.skedco.com), and what appears to be an earlier and similar version of this sled is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,283,068 (Keyser 1981). This type of transport device was developed for rescuing and transporting people who have been injured. Briefly, it comprises a flexible sheet of a plastic material that has been provided with securing straps and handle straps. The straps generally pass through metal grommets to reduce the risk of tearing the plastic, and reinforcing devices near the “head” of the plastic sheet (apparently by rivets) reduce the risk of tearing the sled if a person being rescued must be lifted out of a dangerous location in a near-vertical orientation, or if a loaded sled must be pulled and dragged across a rough surface or over a long distance.
The “Sked Rescue System” is the closest prior art known to the Inventors herein. However, that system also suffers from certain shortcomings that limit its use, including its weight and bulk. According to Skedco's 2004 product catalog, the “Sked Basic Rescue System” weighs 19 pounds, and photographs in the catalog make it appear that the unit, when rolled up and stuffed into a carrying sleeve, approaches the size and bulk of a golf bag. Clearly, soldiers on foot patrols in hostile areas are already heavily weighed down by weaponry, protective equipment, communications gear, and enough supplies to cope with a range of emergencies and contingencies, and it is not feasible or realistic to require soldiers under those types of conditions to carry an additional 19-pound load that is nearly the size of a golf bag.
In addition, if a natural disaster, terrorist bombing, or other major crisis occurs that causes numerous casualties, most types of vehicles (such as armored vehicles, helicopters, etc.) could not easily carry more than a few such devices, in addition to everything else they would need to be carrying.
For these and other reasons, although the plastic sleds made by Skedco have become important in rescue and retrieval operations, they rarely are carried into field situations as a matter of routine, before they are known to be needed. Instead, they normally are stored at supporting sites (such as field hospitals for military use, and police, fire, or ranger stations for civilian use). If and when they are carried in land vehicles, the vehicles rarely carry more than one sled, because each unit takes up substantial space and volume.